Exceptions to policy
I'm the original author of most of the core text in the policy manual
(or was, I may not be). When I wrote it I anticipated that people
might need to violate the policy in special circumstances, and didn't
intend people to take it as a set of absolute rules.
I think that it's valuable to be able to ignore broken policy or to
defer implementation of policy-under-discussion, and also valuable to
be able to have exceptions (before they're documented, or even which
will never be documented).
The proposed constitution requires a supermajority from the Technical
Committee to overrule a developer, and doesn't make any special
exception for things that are definitely policy violations. I think
this is a good thing, because it means that if a developer and policy
come into conflict the issue will be decided on the merits of the
particular case.
I think that the fact thats there are sometimes exceptions, and that
policy which is under discussion may well be violated in the meantime,
should themselves be documented. Perhaps this should be mentioned in
the preamble to the policy manual ?
Ian.
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